Month: February 2018

Although he recorded 14 albums that collectively sold over 30 million copies from 1970 into the ’90s, Rory Gallagher is not as well known of a blues rock guitarist as many of its contemporaries. Those who know of him though always rank him up there with the best of the best.

Deuce was Rory Gallagher’s second album. It had a freer feel than his debut from a year earlier. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the songs were recorded live in the studio versus being multitracked. The songs sound spontaneous and the solos in have an on-the-spot, improvised quality to them. It’s a style that fits the Irish rocker’s playing style perfectly.

I discovered Rory Gallagher rather late in his career; in the mid ’90s. I was growing tired of a lot of the pop music, grunge, and hairbands at that time. Even country music, which I enjoy from time to time, was becoming too commercialized for my taste. My listening preference started aligning more with traditional blues-rock from the ’70s, and I started looking for artists that I might have overlooked a decade or two earlier. I became a huge Rory Gallagher fan the very first time I heard him.

I’ve always felt that blues-rock is a style of music that is best performed live. This, combined with my high regard for Rory Gallagher’s playing, make me regret that I never got a chance to see him perform in concert before his too early passing in 1995.

Rod Stewart was still singing with The Faces when he released his third solo album “Every Picture Tells A Story” in 1971. Even though Stewart had his own band for the album, all of the members of The Faces play at some part on the record. The most prominent is Ron Wood, whose guitar playing really sets an overall feeling throughout much of the album.

This album is considered by many, myself included, to be Rod Stewart’s finest hour. There are so many great songs on “Every Picture Tells a Story” that For most people, it would be hard to list a favorite. “Mandolin Wind”, (Find a) Reason to Believe”, “(I Know) I’m Losing You”, “That’s All Right”, “Maggie May”, and of course the title song to the album all top the list of Rod Stewart’s best songs of his entire career, let alone from this album.

Although a few of the songs here are covers of previous hits by other bands, the versions Rod Stewart does on this “Every Picture Tells A Story” are far from the style of the originals. Probably the most notable was the rearrangement of The Temptations’ Motown classic “(I Know) I’m Losing You”. The version here is hard rocking with a funk groove that closes with some incredible drumming by Kenny Jones from The Faces.

The Cure is a band known for its gothic, gloom and doom sound. That’s really an unfair statement about the band’s music especially when you consider their material from their sixth album and beyond. While “The Head on the Door” still sounded very much like The Cure, it marked a significant shift in style for the eighties alternative band. The songs on it, all written by lead singer Robert Smith, were more upbeat than on previous Cure albums and the production was brighter.

The shift in sound alienated some of The Cure’s older fans but it gained them many new ones. The album became a 1985 landmark crossover between alternative and pop music. The Cure followed up “The Head on the Door” with a string of other albums that were successful on both the alternative and pop charts all the way into the ’90s. “The Head on the Door” however, still remains their most successful album.

One of the reasons I always enjoyed albums and was never big into buying just the single is a lot of albums had hidden gems on them. All-American boy, the debut solo album by Rick derringer is an album that is loaded with great songs that you would almost never hear on the radio, except for “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo”.

Rick Derringer is an extremely versatile guitarist and producer who has played as either an official band member or guest musician on albums by Edgar Winter, Steely Dan, Todd Rudgren, Kiss, Alice Cooper, and Wierd Al Yankovic. He also toured guitarist with Cindy Lauper’s “True Colors” tour. It was her first headlining tour and Derringer really energized the shows.

I have to admit I chuckle a little bit every time I look at this album cover. I really don’t think Rick, or any other guitarist for that matter, can play the guitar wearing gloves. I mean he’s good, but not that good.

I’ll admit it, I really didn’t get into Genesis until their eleventh album, 1981’s “Abacab”. After being blown away by that record and knowing they had many albums out before it that I had ignored, I had to check out their back catalog. Genesis has since become one of my favorite bands and “Selling England by the Pound” has become one of my favorite albums by them.

“Selling England by the Pound” is about as British of an album as you will hear by any band. When Genesis recorded it in 1974 they were concerned that British culture was being taken over by Americanism. They felt their country was selling out. Hence the name of the album and its title song. That said, it’s probably no surprise that it had much better commercial success in the UK then it did in the US – although, it did fare well in both.

You won’t hear any blues chords in this album, or really any other early Genesis album. They were never about embracing American blues. They were about incorporating traditional British and European music into rock and roll, and they were better at it than probably any other band at the time. This is probably why they didn’t have as significant commercial success in the United States with their early albums and why I pretty much ignored their music until their music crossed over in the ’80s, incorporating just a little R&B into it – and made me want to check out their back catalog.

Frankenmuth Michigan, about an hour and a half drive north of Detroit, has for as long as I can remember, been known for its German cultured shops and the infamous chicken dinners served at Zehnder’s and The Bavarian Inn restaurants. But in late 2017, Frankenmuth became known for something else – Greta Van Fleet – one of the hardest rocking quartets since … dare I say … Led Zeppelin.

The comparisons between Greta Van Fleet and Zeppelin come with no apologies from the band members who are huge Zep fans. But they are also quick to point out that they are not by any stretch, a Led Zeppelin cover or tribute band.

Still, if you like Led Zeppelin, and wish there were more bands around today that recorded that kind of music, well, you need to pick up either “Black Smoke Rising” their debut four song EP or “From The Fires”, their first full length LP.

Right now, my vinyl collection only includes the “Black Smoke Rising” EP, but trust me, that will soon be rectified.

Going into the 1980s, synthesizers started to become more and more prevalent in popular music. At first, synths were used primarily to supplement songs or for an occasional solo. But moving into the new decade, a handful of bands, like the Eurythmics, began to use them as the primary, sometimes exclusive instrument in their songs.

Although the Eurythmics didn’t officially abandoned guitar in their music the way some other bands did at the time, Annie Lenox and Dave Stewart did make minimal use of it – especially on their second album, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”.

The Eurythmics, and especially this album, were very influential for the rising popularity of alternative, or new wave music in the eighties. The title track became one of the biggest hits for the Eurythmics and is the most immediately recognizable songs by the band. It is a song that is immediately associated with pop culture of the ’80s.

Rick Wakeman is an amazing musician and composer. Jules Verne was an amazing author. Combine the two and you get an amazing album.

Never one to shy away from the grandiose, the former keyboardist for Yes wrote “Journey to the Centre of The Earth” following the release of his first solo album, “The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth”. Rather than going into the studio, Wakeman chose to record his second solo record live. For the huge undertaking, he employed the talents of conductor David Measham who lead The London Symphony Orchestra and English Chamber Choir for the performance. The story is supplemented through prose read in between the main musical passages by British stage and film actor David Hemmings.

Part classical, part rock, part spoken word, “Journey to the Centre of the Earth” topped the British charts and made it to the third position in the U.S. It is an amazing piece of music, composed by an amazing musician, based on a story by an amazing author. If you have never listened to it, you owe it to yourself to do so. I think you’ll be amazed.

While most people who are familiar with the band Journey will associate their music with the incredible voice of Steve Perry, some may be surprised to learn that they released three albums before Perry joined the band.

Released in 1977, “Next” was the third and final album Journey would record before deciding to change their sound by bringing in an additional singer to front the band. This album, like the two before it, has a strong contrast to the album’s recorded with Steve Perry. In classic progressive rock style the songs on “Next” focus more on musicianship than on the vocals. If there was ever any doubt, “Next” makes it clearly obvious what great players the members of Journey were

While I have to admit that I like the later albums with Steve Perry better than Journey’s first three records, I still love listening their early stuff. It has a more aggressive style to it. Plus, I’m a sucker for extended solos an jamming. I’m glad Journey changed their sound by add-in Steve Perry. He had an amazing voice and they recorded some incredible music with him. The thing is, they recorded some greAt stuff without him too. It just didn’t become as well-known.

One of the things that always made albums cool was their size. With twelve inches of real estate to work with, there were some albums that took advantage of the size to do cool artwork. Others used it to throw in some cool extras – or in the case of The Who’s “Live at Leeds” A LOT of extras.

Almost all of the extras included with the original 1970 release of “Live at Leeds” were artifacts from The Who’s early career. Among some of the more interesting are a rejection letter from EMI Records (They were eventually signed to Decca), a sheet where they had worked out the lyrics to “My Generation”, a notice to take them to court if they didn’t pay the rental fees for some amps after their check bounced, A couple of tour schedules (one recent and one from before they were signed and were still performing under the name “The High Numbers”), a picture taken from backstage with band notes and some lyrics to their rock opera “Tommy” scribbled on the back, and the contract they signed to perform at the Woodstock festival in 1969. And there was more… But the album is about to run out so that’s all I have time to mention.

“Live at Leeds” is considered by many to be the greatest live album ever recorded. I don’t know if I’d personally place it at the top of the heap but as most Brits would have said it back then, I’d put it bloody well close.